Results tagged “publicart”

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Last Sunday, Torontoist trekked to Woodbine Beach for a sandcastle-building extravaganza hosted by Art Attack!, the arts themed division of the Toronto Public Space Committee. The event was free, and open to anyone who wanted to participate. Liam O’Doherty, the event's organizer, told us that the purpose of the event was "to bring strangers together" and "have as much fun as possible."

We're going in another direction. Toronto's experiencing something of a regeneration, what with bold, new architectural shoots and plans for greener streetscapes threatening to upend our reputed preference for a staid, vanilla aesthetic. But these are stationary propositions—they will be built, rooted as a reef, and we will come. But what about the art of serendipity? Why not an accidental encounter with the sublime? Art on the Move is "a mobile community arts project," the purpose of which is to add a few drops of public, urban design into a street—into a life—near you.

We showed you photos of the Urban Repair Squad's latest intervention in a post on Tuesday—wherein we firmly insisted that the future health of the region's transportation infrastructure hinges on the presence of two twelve-foot-tall plywood figures—but today we have a video for you! The clip is a "bit of a first," the URS tells us, in that "It was made collectively."

On first glance, the above shot could be a generic photo pulled from our Flickr pool to accompany any article about pedestrianism/cycling/active transportation/Toronto. But look at it for another moment, and you may notice that there's something amiss about the City's topiary logo alongside the Gardiner...

     

Three weeks ago, Now Magazine published a first-person account of the forcible confinement and assault of regular contributor (and Pedestrian Committee member) Roger Brook. On an unspecified part of Dufferin, Brook stopped to take down one of those junk signs illegally attached to utility poles throughout the city—the kind of advertising that even right-wing city councillors get pissy about [PDF]. Despite the fact that he (and the sign) were fully within the public space, Brook was threatened and attacked by a private security guard who wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him to a fence, and radioed the police. Private security of course has no such authority in the public space—nor had Brook done anything illegal—but silly things like laws aren't really of much interest to someone whose behaviour would warrant a feature-length investigation even if he were a cop. Brook's article gave us difficulty sleeping; we have no idea how we would handle the situation he found himself in.

There's been much debate in recent days over whether or not the TTC should remodel its crumbling, 50s-era "bathroom tile" subway stations (since now they can). A vocal proponent of the renovation plan has been TTC Commissioner and Councillor Sandra Bussin, who thinks that the common masses aren't design-savvy enough to hold an opinion of much weight.

This evening, Toronto Culture and Fort York are unveiling a permanent public art installation under the Gardiner Expressway (off Fort York Boulevard, between Bathurst and Fleet Streets). In WATERTABLE, Toronto artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak use video and lights to create the effect of rippling water on the underside of the highway—a reminder that the Gardiner runs along what used to the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Ever wonder why the the Toronto Harbour Commission building is notably not on the harbour? It used to be surrounded by water on three sides!

Photo by Marc Lostracco.

While events like Luminato and Nuit Blanche are fantastic, Toronto is sorely lacking in quality, long-term public art. Last April, Henk Hofstra created an "urban river" in Drachten, Holland. The Blue Road installation is an example of what mind-blowing urban public art can be. Featuring 1000 metres of road painted blue and the phrase "Water is Life" written in eight-metre-high letters across it, the Blue Road is reminiscent of the waterway that used to be...

London's transit story of the week—if not the year—was Tuesday's re-opening of St. Pancras rail station after £800 million (that's $1.6 billion) of renovations. Not only does the station provide London with a new terminus for a high-speed 300km/h rail link to Paris and Brussels (with a planned stop at the 2012 Olympics site in east London along the way), but it also upgrades the city's regional and suburban rail connections and improves access...

Tomorrow night, November 2nd, a new CaseCamp-format un-conference will touch down in Toronto. Combining two sessions from the art community and one session from a related industry, ArtSmash is a unique speaker series that will generate a room full of creative ideas. The event is being coordinated by Ella Cooper and presented by the Emerging Arts Professional Network.

series from The Movement Movement. The main movers of The Movement Movement, dancer/choreographer Jenn Goodwin and artist/curator Jessica Rose, are inviting the public to run laps of the museum for public art’s sake. You could be running through Ancient Peru or perhaps Heaven or Hell. Sounds exotic! The upcoming run will be extra special as filmmaker Nick de Pencier will work with Lewis Kaye (soundster) and Dean Baldwin (photographer) to capture the run on film. The art of running through art will create art.

Try as you might, you can't look anywhere in our city without seeing some sort of ad for Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista. Alongside an unusually aggressive advertising campaign through more traditional methods, the company also went all out and paid for an elaborate ice house in Dundas Square. As the corporation should have expected, the backlash towards the over-the-top promotion began almost right away: there were the obvious jokes about "freezing"; impromptu dance parties organized inside the house; even some analysis of Microsoft's method of disposing the house --- letting it melt below the Gardiner.

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!

Back in 2002 artists Christie Pearson and Sandra Rechico decided to create wade, a series of public art installations in Toronto's many wading pools. With the help of YYZ Artists Outlet the the first wade project came to life in 2004. For one weekend Torontonians visited pools filled with blue jello, Dante inspired inflatable whales and many more pools re-imagined to make any number of artistic statements. It was a resounding success. The 2006 edition of wade is on this weekend and we exchanged e-mails with Sandra Rechico, one of wade's founders, about playing with art, public space interventions and marrying gay penguins.

Peter Kuitenbrower writes about the Bloor St. Redesign in the National Post today. At first glance, the plan seems great, lots of trees, public art, better walkways for pedestrians and fewer parking spots. All good things if you want to make a more walkable neighbourhood.

and is modeled after an annual Parisian festival that began in October of 2002 and has already spread to other cities such as Brussels, Rome, and Madrid.

The Toronto Star runs a profile on Rita Davies, Toronto's culture czar (actually the executive director of culture for the city) and touts her work as one of the reasons why Toronto's culture scene isn't just surviving but arguably thriving today. Inspiringly Davies also asks us to compare ourselves to other great cities like San Francisco, Milan and Chicago. Over the last decades Davies has fought for the arts and even created a 10-year plan in 2003 called The Culture Plan for the Creative City.

Torontoist's favourite magazine about the city (sorry Toronto Life) is celebrating the launch of its fifth issue at the Arts and Letters Club this Thursday night (14 Elm St., 8pm, $10 includes a mag). The most exciting development over at Spacing is the fact that the new issue is in glorious colour, which fits the new issue's theme of public art.

The civic minded folks at Spacing magazine, Ryerson University and the University of Toronto have brought Wendy Radmacher Willis, executive director of the City Club of Portland to lecture at Innis Hall, 7:00 tonight.

Torontoist doesn't usually have much reason to go up to the Sheppard Line or as we call it the "IKEA" line. But after hearing about the public art built in to the new stations of the Sheppard line, we decided to investigate. There's art at other TTC stations (Dupont and College comes to mind) and the work of people like Matt Blackett have made many of us see that even the utilitarian tile designs of various stations has a certain urban beauty.

The architects over at ERA are throwing a party for everyone's favourite local magazine about urban space, and everyone's favourite public art project that invites you to call a number to here various messages in different parts of the city. Yup, Spacing and Murmur will be feted at a Distillery Distric shindig replete with poetry performances by the city's poet laureate, a game called "Name That Toronto Intersection," and thousands of photographs by the city's best shutterbugs. Will Munro and Christopher Thinn will dj, and everyone will stand around talking about how great Toronto is, or how much better it could be.Toronto the Good is the name of the game.

Yesterday afternoon, in between alernating spurts of sunshine and rain, TOist ducked into Brassaii hoping to catch a glimpse of the Contact Photo exhibition and, especially, everybody's favourite Talking Head, David Byrne. Alas, we missed Byrne's lecture, but did show up in time to watch a very stylish- in an high tech Prada-clad cyclist way- Byrne ride off into the sunset with his adorable (and young) female companion. About 20 minutes later, deciding to head to the Drake for a snack, we spied Byrne with a camera at the corner of Queen and Ossington (perhaps taking a picture of his public art series, to be presented on Queen West bus shelters?). Just as we thought we couldn't burn down the house any more, the visionary-musician-artist-rock star-poet saddled up to the Drake's bar to have a glass of port with his companion undisturbed.

TOist loves Spacing like a fat kid loves cake. So the kid is in the sweet shop, and TOist is over the moon because tonight the mag presents Public Space Invaders, 'an evening of short films focused on transit, public art installations, monster homes, surveillance cameras, urban exploration and city life in public space,' at the Draconian. We're curious to see what the piece entitled TTC will be all about.